


In this maze you can lose your way

by voices_in_my_head



Series: Pitch by my Doorstep [2]
Category: Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-26
Updated: 2012-11-26
Packaged: 2017-11-19 15:35:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/574862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voices_in_my_head/pseuds/voices_in_my_head
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is explaining the part 1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In this maze you can lose your way

**Author's Note:**

> It really is as simple as the summary makes it look.

**1)**

When Linus is fifteen he starts doing stupid things. When he’s sixteen they stop being stupid to become outright dumb.

He stops trying to become a better thief from his father and starts doing drugs. Stops caring for his mother words and stops caring for classes. Stops paying attention to what surrounds him.

At that age if asked he’s sure he would have an answer. Now, he doesn’t. It’s just a dumb phase he went through, and he regrets the pain he brought his parents but not all of it. It’s a cliché quote but it’s the truth: we learn from our mistakes.

Linus learnt a lot from those years, not only the bad things but the good too.

His parents knew he was doing drugs and they tried to stop him with rehab, talks, yells and one time, even blackmail. When they got sick of it, or his father did, anyway, they sent him to a military school. The part of him that still remembers his teenage years hates his parents for it, but this Linus doesn’t.

Military school is not only supposed to straighten you out but to give you a purpose, which is to enlist and go to war.

Linus learns new languages, how to work with guns and most important: how to be a shadow. If he’s quiet then nobody will want to send him to war, and that’s all he wants.

Yes, he is afraid of war, like any rational being should be, but it’s also that he just doesn’t like wars. Doesn’t agree with them, and that’s something the military just can’t accept.

So he learns how to be a shadow and when he gets out that works just fine for him.

His relationship with his parents change and he knows that as much as he can work for it to heal, it’ll never be like it once was.

Teaching Rusty how to work with the machine guns just reminds him of that.

**2)**

Linus finished college at twenty one, with a degree on English literature, which of course didn’t get him anything except for being an excellent cover on a big heist. But of course no big heists came so he started his life. He could back to college and take another degree but that was the last thing on his mind.

Instead he started working on a restaurant as a waiter and maybe that wasn’t the future his parents planned for him, or even the one he wanted but it was okay.

Working in a restaurant he saw lots and lots of people pass by the window. He mostly saw how less than 1% of them actually paid any attention to the homeless guy sleeping just a few steps from the restaurant.

Linus doesn’t know what made him do it, but one day he starts handing the homeless guy the remains of the restaurant. But even with giving him that, there’s still a lot of it, so every day, after he gets out, he walks through the city and gives the homeless food. When he doesn’t have any he gives them money.

He loses his job after a couple of weeks of doing this, but it’s okay. He wouldn’t change the grateful looks for a million dollars.

When he sees the homeless guy in Las Vegas, while talking to Rusty, giving him money is just a habit.

He does it and is surprised to see that Rusty is surprised at what he did.

“If things had gone differently that could have been you. Or me. Or Danny. Or Terry Benedict,” Linus tells him when they part ways and leaves before Rusty can answer him.

**3)**

Linus learned how to play poker when he was thirteen with friends. He sucked at it, because he had no poker face but he didn’t really care. Back then they played for fun, not for money.

And then one day one of his friends got greedy and lost too much to a couple of older guys.

Linus has no idea how he did but he won against them. Of course he still got beaten pretty badly, but at least they didn’t touch Tony.

After that his father taught him and most important, told him what to look for on the other players.

Everyone has got a different tic that will give them away, but that’s the secret. What isn’t the secret is that everybody has a got a tic that will give them away.

Linus will admit he loves the look on the group’s faces when he wins against them.

He smiles at Danny and wonders how he knew. Had Bobby told him, anybody else, or was it just a hunch? It doesn’t really matter, one way or another, he still got his money.

**4)**

Linus likes chewing gums. He has no idea why or when it started, it’s just something he enjoys and since it doesn’t hurt anybody, he sees no reason for stopping it.

Now smoking, that’s something different.

He started at fifteen and not for good reasons. His parents didn’t want him and his friends did. There was never really an argument.

When he’s in military school he stops smoking, because it’s bad for his lungs and what he really needs there, is to be in perfect heath, so he stops.

He starts back just a couple of weeks after he graduates, not because somebody tells him or something, but because he knew it would only be a matter of time, so why wait?

There are worse ways of dying, anyway, and he still doesn’t smoke nearly as much as he did in high school.

**5)**

Linus finds out he’s attracted to girls when he’s eleven. People might find it strange, but it really isn’t. Most boys aren’t attracted to girls right away, their parents and teachers just tell them they do and it becomes the truth after a while.

He figures he also likes boys a year later and for him it isn’t a big deal. Sexuality has never been a subject of conversation on his house but he doesn’t think it’s because his parents are homophobic or something.

It’s just because they know there are all sort of sexualities, and talking about it won’t change it.

He tells them when he’s thirteen because they’re making jokes about his marriage. Of course they’re talking about a female fiancée so he sets them straight.

“Maybe I’ll marry a boy and not a girl,” he says and they laugh until they stop and then nod.

Linus doesn’t care who knows, because as far as he’s concerned this is a way of making sure the people he’s surrounded by are worth it.

Most times they are, but when they aren’t he doesn’t feel too bad at letting them go.

He takes up the bartender’s, Mark, offer not just because he wants to but to see what Rusty and Danny will do.

He’s glad to see he didn’t judge them bad when all he gets is a wink from Danny.

**+1)**

Rusty is Linus’s type, but then again, he’s everybody’s type.

Linus spends a month in Chicago without any contact with the other besides some phone calls with Danny or Tess, who’s a very nice woman and he immediately likes, not to mention the fact that she’s extremely alike Julia Roberts, but he hasn’t found the right way to tell her that yet.

Then one day he walks into his apartment and there’s Rusty. There’s a part of him that wants to ask a lot of questions, but if Rusty wants to tell him something, then he will.

So he sits beside him and they watch TV, then they eat Chinese, still watching TV, and Linus has no idea which movie or soap opera they’re watching, since his brain is basically in another world, but it’s okay because looking at Rusty he’s almost positive the other man is at the same place.

Suddenly he imagines himself on top of a red planet and a couple of feet away there’s Rusty on top of another world, this one blue, and Linus tries to get close but as much as he runs he only makes the planet spin, not move forward.

He looks at Rusty in that moment and thinks that the two planets he just imagined it’s a nice metaphor, since they’re both sitting in the same sofa but it’s like there’s a world separating them.

He kisses Rusty not only to make the image disappear but also because they both knew it would happen sooner or later and Linus can’t stand the arguing on the TV anymore.

Linus doesn’t think of what will happen the next day, or even the moment their mouths separate, he just thinks: it’s about time and he can feel the smirk on Rusty’s lips, except he’s not sure if it’s because he’s thinking something similar or because he’s smug Linus was the one to make the first move. 

Linus pinches his ass anyway.

 


End file.
